


Everybody Feels the Wind Blow

by Dee_Laundry



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Wakes & Funerals, Wilson's Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-01
Updated: 2008-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 03:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dee_Laundry/pseuds/Dee_Laundry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the days after, House tries to figure out how to adjust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody Feels the Wind Blow

**Author's Note:**

> Post-ep for episode 4-16, “Wilson’s Heart”; spoilers through then. Title is from the Paul Simon song “[Graceland](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq2Kbue6cTI).” Related pictures [here](http://ctb.herstorycomics.com/407screens.html). Thanks to [](http://blackmare-9.livejournal.com/profile)[**blackmare_9**](http://blackmare-9.livejournal.com/) , [](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/profile)[**daisylily**](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/) , and [](http://nightdog-barks.livejournal.com/profile)[**nightdog_barks**](http://nightdog-barks.livejournal.com/) for beta.

Bringing Cameron was his first mistake.

He’d wanted Chase, but strangely enough, the man had preferred to continue scrubbing in for surgery over chauffeuring newly-sprung-from-ICU-but-forbidden-to-drive House around. _Weirdo._ So he was stuck with the skinny blonde instead of the skinny blond, and really, when she wasn’t trying to be all sassy, did she _ever_ stop dripping compassion over everything?

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said for the fortieth time as House knocked on Wilson’s door.

“You’re the getaway car driver, Cameron, not the nursemaid.” He shouldn’t have had to explain – wouldn’t have had to if Pathetically Cute Kid’s appendix hadn’t burst – but it seemed to be the only way to maybe get some peace and quiet. “Wilson’s not at the hospital and none of you people are with him, so that means he’s holed up in there alone moping. We get him out of there, into my place, where there’s life and sound and entertainment, and then I promise I’ll rest my weary head, OK, Nightingale?

“House –”

“Shut up; he’s coming.” House could almost make himself believe he was hearing footsteps behind the door. Of course not; sound proofing was too thick in this building – not that he hadn’t been grateful for that the time he’d come over ten minutes early, inadvertently causing a poorly appreciated _coitus interruptus_ – but it was good to think that Wilson was on his feet, at least.

The knob turning was a relieving confirmation, and House couldn’t stop himself from starting in before the door was open even an inch. “Pack it up and let’s move it out, solider!”

“Excuse me?” was the reply, coming out of the mouth of a woman he’d talked to not too long ago but hadn’t ever expected to see again.

“Beth?”

She shook her head, causing her frizzy fine hair to bounce inelegantly. “He’s sleeping now, House, and even if he wasn’t, you can’t see him. Go home.”

“I can’t see him but you can?” House looked her over: she was still short, still mousy, still shaped like a pubescent boy. Still sexy, in a pixie kind of way. “And Wilson’s now _sleeping_.” He paused to let the innuendo simmer, then turned it up to a blatant boil. “Sympathy fuck, nice. He as good as you remembered?”

Cameron shrieked as large hands hit House’s chest. He was knocked backward into the hallway wall, and the man attached to the hands came with him, got right up into his face.

“You don’t talk to people that way,” the man said, in the voice of every professional bouncer House had ever known. Stance, too: one of the man’s hands was on House’s left shoulder; the other was around House’s right wrist. “And especially not to my wife.”

“Jason, honey, let him go,” Beth said from the doorway. “He’s just lashing out in his misery. We need to have some sympathy for him. I know I’d be upset if my closest friend never wanted to see me again.”

The hands withdrew; the body withdrew, hulking off behind Beth. “You don’t know,” House insisted, and her split ends bobbed again.

“I do know,” Beth replied, “because I actually listen to him. Go away, House. He has his friends, and his family’s on their way. You’re not welcome here.”

House ignored Cameron’s twittering attention to the back of his head – Had he hit it? He couldn’t remember – in favor of watching the door swing closed. The _snick_ of the lock seemed to echo in the hallway, spurring House to get the hell out of there.

“Who were they?” Cameron asked, trotting after him like the faithful companion he didn’t want her to be.

“Ex-Mrs. Wilson the First,” House snapped. “And apparently Mr. Beth the Current.”

He pushed out of the building; Cameron lingered a moment to hold the door for a woman struggling with several grocery bags. A scrawny woman with flyaway hair and no discernible sense of style.

“And there was Ex-Mrs. Wilson the Second,” House commented when Cameron finally got her ass to the car.

She sighed, and squinched her face in pity, and House had to look away before he slugged her. “You shouldn’t –”

“Have come here. Yeah, yeah, I got that. Let’s go.”

* * *

House felt ridiculous in the stupid mothball-smelling suit and itchily anxious at the number of people milling around. He couldn’t understand why the damn place was so packed. There was no _way_ CB had conned this many people into liking her, and respect only went so far in dragging people out of their homes for a viewing.

A _viewing_. Why didn’t everybody just parade through the morgue? It was meaningless and not Jewish, and he couldn’t comprehend why Wilson had agreed to it.

House was going to have to iron another shirt for the funeral.

The Volakis family showing was small: mother, sister, a few cousins. No father. Dead, sick, or simply a callous jackhole, House didn’t know because he wasn’t close enough to eavesdrop properly and no one was talking to him.

Not that House cared.

He was “viewing” and standing witness and whatever else was supposed to be accomplished by this boring event, and adding idle chit-chat would’ve dragged it all down farther. Sitting alone was better. It let him watch out for Wilson, let him guard against his friend being swallowed in the sea of humanity that kept cresting around him. How was the man supposed to breathe, with everyone hanging around, hanging _on_ him with feeble hugs and manly arm clasps, demanding his time and words like there wasn’t enough going on? Wilson had been surrounded when House got here, and the tide had kept flowing over the past ninety minutes, never a second for him to be by himself, to think and rest in peaceful solitude.

Or with House.

The current shifted, a wave swelled, and Wilson was carried over to the other side of the room, past House to the waiting matriarch. Berenike Volakis was as tall as her daughter had been but even more imperious. And her eyes softened to almost the same degree at the approach of one James Wilson.

He reached for her hands, and his retinue fell away. They stood together, clasping each other’s hands between them like young Shakespearean lovers.

“James,” Berenike murmured. “You dear boy.”

Wilson’s eyes slipped closed; his hands squeezed gently; there ought to have been violins playing. “I’m so sorry,” he said earnestly, and House... snapped.

“ _You_ didn’t kill her.” He was on his feet and moving; he’d sat on the sidelines too long.

Their heads whipped in his direction; their eyes followed his uneven gait as he came up to them.

“House,” Cameron breathed, angel on his elbow. Where the hell had she come from? “Of course he didn’t, but you can be sorry without it being your fault.”

“Human beings can,” Berenike noted, the tree from which the Amber apple had not far fallen. House liked her.

Wilson waved Cameron off, wrapped an arm around Berenike’s shoulders, hung his head as the penitent House knew he’d always longed to be. “But it _is_ my fault.” The silver voice dropped to a low, heavy whisper. “I let things get to the point that they did.”

Fucking hell.

“Your guilt is _bullshit_ ,” House pointed out.

Wilson stared at him a long time, brown eyes intensely focused, looking for something, trying to communicate something, but it was just eyesight. He wasn’t moving at all, so there was no body language, no language of any kind. Just silent looking, and what the fuck did Wilson want him to get from that?

“Paul,” Wilson said after a moment, and Wilson’s brother appeared in House’s peripheral vision. He wasn’t a big guy, shorter than Wilson, way shorter than House, but he had a force field of cold anger blowing his size all out of proportion. Blowing House back, away from Wilson, a Plexiglas dome rising up between them, and Wilson was turning the deadbolt, click, click.

It wasn’t until House was out on the sidewalk by himself, in the ridiculous warmth of a spring day, that he realized that maybe Wilson was insulted by what he’d said. “Your guilt,” House whispered, just to see if he remembered the words, “is bullshit.” Those had been the words, and he had meant them. They were accurate.

Accurate but not precise, to borrow a term from statistics.

They could have been misinterpreted as disparaging words, scornful, bitter words, the kind House flung every day at the deserving many and bystanding few alike.

But what Wilson should have heard, should have _known_ , was something different. A confession of House’s own, a _true_ one this time: it was all House’s fault. Wilson wasn’t allowed to shoulder any of the guilt, to take one more ounce of pain on himself, because it was all House. Wilson hadn’t led a blameless life, there was a lot to ask forgiveness for, but none of it was attached to Amber’s death.

None of it.

That was what House had meant.

Wilson should have known that. Interpreting House was even more his specialty than oncology. It was his strength, his _forte_ , his calling, his _raison d'être_...

Except Wilson’s _être_ had gotten a new _raison_ in the past few months, hadn’t it? And it was now _mort_.

 _Merde_.

Wilson hated him.

He walked three blocks over before he called the cab.

* * *

It took him a day to locate and contact the crew, two days to convince them who he was, two and a half weeks and more money than he wanted to think about to get the rights, and three days holed up with a scrungy geek and a million dollars’ worth of equipment to do the job. They could’ve probably done it in one but it had to be perfect.

The first twenty minutes of it, anyway.

* * *

He wanted to take it over to Wilson’s apartment himself, to slip inside while the place was empty and put the package in exactly the right spot with his own two hands. Placement seemed crucial – _feng shui_ and cubits of altars and the _mitzvot_ of the ancient _korbanot_ , perfecting presentation to bring good energy and influence acceptance of the offering.

Problem was, the place was never empty any more. Wilson came to work on a part-time basis, but his apartment still held a rotating guard: now Beth, now the parents, now Paul, now Bonnie, now some other person House had never met. A whole cadre of people who cared about Wilson, taking shifts to care _for_ him so the man never had to be alone.

Wilson had been his only compatriot in the Empire Nation of House for so very long, and he had come to believe he was similarly singular in Wilson’s life. The wives didn’t count; the patients didn’t count; the colleagues didn’t count. Amber had been the exception, and after her death, House had expected Wilson only to have him.

But come to find out, Wilson had _more_. That meant two things. One, that House’s solitary life was even more wretched and pitiable than he’d thought, and two, that Wilson had _chosen_ House. Out of everyone he could’ve spent time with, taken care of, allowed to need him, Wilson had picked House.

The notion was frightening in its implications. It meant House might have been worth something. It meant their friendship hadn’t been simply two lonely people with nothing better to do. It meant Wilson had loved not just a needy, brilliant bastard but _him_.

It made the pain of Wilson’s absence worse.

He sent the courier over Thursday at ten, and spent the rest of the morning thinking through timing and every possible variation of actions that could occur between the Spandex-wearing courier walking out of House’s office and the end goal of Wilson making a response. It was like charting out a chess game, like extending the branches on a decision tree, creating a mental map of path and probability to calculate when he might receive the signal from on high of the success or failure of this oblation.

The day passed into evening, and the carefully plotted graph of House’s hope collapsed. He got drunk that night but he did it at home.

Friday morning was a nothing kind of morning. The cafeteria had been out of cherry danishes, and Wilson’s office had been shut tight as House walked past, but the coffee in the conference room was all right. Taub had taken to bringing in some special African blend, and it was pretty good. He should probably tell Taub that at some point, maybe ask him where he got it. The kind of thing human beings did with their colleagues.

He wondered where Berenike Volakis worked.

Around lunch time Cameron sent up a case for them: unexplained weight loss, intermittent fever and rash. He let Kutner write on the board and Foreman lead the differential, jumping in only when they were going seriously off track. The preliminary diagnosis was almost certainly the right one, but when the kiddies scurried off for the first round of tests, House took the file back to his desk to work out some back-ups. Wouldn’t hurt to be prepared.

He was getting into some juicy details about the patient’s childhood bout of ITP when the phone rang; he grabbed it without looking. “Yeah?” he barked, expecting it to be Taub with something interesting for him.

“House.”

It was Wilson.

“Hi,” House managed to get out around the breath he was holding.

“I need you to come over,” Wilson said softly.

He looked at the file, at his handwritten notes, at the doorway where no minions had yet appeared with test results. “I have a,” House said and then stopped. A month before he would’ve finished that sentence, chatted and hung up the phone, and stayed at the hospital until his case was finished. A month before he’d had different priorities in his life.

“OK,” he said. “I’ll be there. Just a few things to wrap. Twenty minutes, OK? Is that good enough, twenty minutes?”

“Yes,” said Wilson. “That’s good enough.”

After hanging up the phone, House circled the most important points in his notes, shoved the notes in the file, and shoved the file into Foreman’s hands. “Gotta go. Depending on test results, you might want to look through a few of the suggestions there,” House said, and headed back to his desk to pack up.

Foreman stalked right after him, pushing the file back in his direction. “Where are you going? We’re not done with this patient.”

“I have something I have to do.” There wasn’t actually much to pack, so House was ready to go. “You can handle it.” He hefted his bag to his shoulder and took a step forward.

“But –” Foreman replied, and House shook his head.

“You do it when I’m in a coma, right? You do it when I stick a knife in a light socket, when I’m drunk, when I’m sick, when I’m running around chasing after a soap star. You can do it on your own now.”

He pushed open the door and headed into the hall, leaving his office behind, leaving the puzzle behind in the hands of doctors who weren’t as good as him but were decent enough. He was needed elsewhere.

He was halfway through the lobby when Cuddy stopped him. “Look, House,” she said insistently, a small but strong hand wrapped around his forearm, “you get out of Clinic duty because you have a patient. You don’t get out of Clinic duty because you want to gallivant off early on a Friday afternoon.” Normality. Something he’d have to thank Cuddy for, on another day, when he wasn’t so busy.

“Wilson needs me,” House explained.

She lifted a well-groomed eyebrow. “Do you know this through your psychic powers?”

“He called me.”

The eyebrow arched further. Cuddy knew they hadn’t had an actual conversation since the day Amber died. She’d been part of the current Wilson had dived into to be borne away from House.

“So if I check the switchboard records,” Cuddy asked, “will it show an incoming call from Wilson’s apartment?”

“It will,” House said sincerely. “I have to go.”

As he hit the lobby doors, Cuddy called after him, “Give Wilson my best.”

House turned around, his back against the door, and smirked at her. “I’ve been telling you to give him your best for _years_ , Cuddy. You haven’t done it yet.”

She smiled at him with only the barest twinge of sadness, and maybe life wasn’t all horrible.

* * *

At Wilson’s door House took a few minutes to contemplate the paint. It was boring. As boring as watching it dry, to use the old cliché, but it kept him from thinking about what might happen next. “What now?” dead Amber had asked, and at this moment he had no more of an answer than he’d had then.

Two short knocks and the door swung open.

“Hi, Greg.”

“Hello, Mrs. Wilson.”

She smiled at him, deep brown eyes warm and motherly. “I told you, call me Rina.”

Following her gesture, he stepped inside the apartment.

“It’s good to see you, dear,” she continued. “Joe and I’ve come by again to spend the weekend with Jimmy, although of course, we’re not who he really wants.”

House nodded, his heart thundering with hope.

“But,” she continued, sighing, “there’s no way to bring poor Amber back.” She gestured toward the bedroom. “He’s in there.”

House had been in Amber’s bedroom before, millennia ago when he’d been convinced she was just screwing Wilson to screw with him. It looked exactly the same as it had then, with the exception of the guy propped up against pillows, occupying the near half of the bed.

“Hey,” House said as he stood awkwardly in the doorway.

“Hey,” Wilson replied. His voice and expression were both even, giving nothing away. “Come sit.” A nod toward Wilson’s right. “Over there.”

“There’s nowhere to –”

“On the bed,” Wilson interrupted. “I won’t bite.”

“You probably should,” House commented as he settled against the headboard. The mattress was comfortable, he noted idly. They’d ended up choosing well.

“Maybe,” Wilson replied. “I want you to watch something with me.” With a quick click of the remote House hadn’t realized Wilson was holding, the TV sprang to life.

Oh God. This was supposed to be for _Wilson_ ; House hadn’t expected he’d have to see it again.

He watched, though, because Wilson wanted him to watch. He watched Amber walk and stalk and smile. He watched her sit on the edge of her seat, teacher’s-pet style, and glare down her rivals. He watched her be natural, be herself, be a star. When the documentary crew had come to Princeton-Plainsboro to film Elephant Kid’s treatment, almost everyone had changed in front of the cameras.

Amber had become more herself, just in a brighter shade of lipstick.

When the footage of Amber faded to black, House grabbed for the remote. “OK, I watched.”

Wilson held the remote out to his left, stretching to keep it away from House. “The next part’s important.”

House grabbed for the remote again; Wilson flicked him, and poked him, and pushed him back to the far side of the bed. All the while, the DVD was playing, Wilson’s face on the screen and House’s voice coming through the speakers.

“Wilson, you told those people I was a witch, and now I wish I was one. Not a Wiccan – beautiful religion, my ass – but an actual witch, with the power to summon the dead. I’d like to give Amber back to you for real, instead of just the film footage.

“But I have to live with reality, as improbable as reality always turns out to be.

“I’ve been thinking of what I could possibly do to make this up to you, and I realized I can’t. I’ll never be able to. The only thing to do is make a sacrifice, offer up something and hope you might see some value in it.

“You got to see inside my brain, and now I’m going to let you see inside my heart. I don’t look in there much. It’s gross. Resection of septic bowel gross. Necrotic skin sloughing off gross. But if you want to see, here goes.

“You know a lot about what I thought about Amber. I wasn’t shy about shooting my mouth off. But I didn’t tell you everything.

“I didn’t tell you that I knew she was smarter than any of the doctors I ended up hiring. I didn’t tell you that I respected the way she owned the Cutthroat Bitch title, the way she wore it like a badge like Thirteen still wears the stupid-ass number. I didn’t tell you that Amber was always pretty, but she only became gorgeous after she fell in love with you.

“And while I was busy telling you some of what I thought, I was equally busy trying to hide what I felt. Not to make you feel better, but to try to make myself feel better. Here it is now, what I felt: I was jealous of your happiness. And at the same time, embarrassed that she was so much better for you than I was. Am. I thought for a long time that the way I treated you was fine, was good enough. She showed me it wasn’t.

“Wilson, I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for what I did, and what I tried to do, and for not telling you any of this before now. I’m... sorry that I killed your happiness.”

There was a few seconds' worth of silence on the DVD, an eon of silence in Amber’s bedroom. House couldn’t look at Wilson; he couldn’t bear to see what might be on Wilson’s face.

On the video, Wilson was looking earnestly at the camera; on the soundtrack, House was lightly clearing his throat. “I was hoping to end this on a giving note, to tell you to stay with your family and find new friends who’ll treat you like you deserve. But I’m a selfish bastard, Wilson, and I miss you too damn much. Please, just... Please.”

Another pause, and then quietly through the speakers came, “Twenty oh two, Wilson. That’s when I started talking. Easy to chop that all right off.”

The DVD continued playing for a few seconds after that. Wilson on the screen looked up at something off-camera and then the screen went black.

Wilson stared at the blackness for a moment, then hit a button on the remote that started the DVD again from the beginning.

House felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Wilson muted the TV, and then turned to House. “The CIA doctor. You were such an idiot over her.”

A reprieve. They weren’t going to talk about it. Thank God. _Thank God_. House swallowed, and then fumbled for the right thing, the _breezy_ thing to say next.

“I was a total idiot. It was bizarre, being blinded by all that pretty.”

“The Bitch is pretty,” Wilson replied, a lilt to his voice.

House’s first instinct was to echo back the smart rejoinder he’d made the first time, back when the Bitch was someone neither of them had cared very much about at all. But this was different; now they cared. Now she was important. And it was obvious from the way Wilson looked at him that this was a test.

This was how House’s life was going to be: a series of tests. Like college, with Scotch instead of flavorless beer and Vicodin instead of pot. But tests, always tests. The main difference of course being that this time he was nowhere near as sure of having the right answers, and there was no one to cheat off of if he didn’t know.

He looked at Wilson, who’d been waiting patiently in the one, two, three seconds it had taken him to think of all this. He looked at Wilson and said, “Yeah. Yeah, she is pretty. You should go for it, ask her out.”

Wilson nodded and looked down at the bedspread. “But what would Scary want with Pathetic?”

House swallowed. He hated tests he wasn’t sure he’d pass. Nothing to be done for it; he’d have to tell the truth. “She’s always looking out for herself, never wants to settle for second best. Why wouldn’t she want you?”

“Oh, she wants me.” Curt nod. “So she can string me up and deposit her eggs in me.”

“Cuddy said that, not me.”

Wilson turned to him and said defiantly, “You thought it.”

“I thought a lot of things. Most of them were wrong.”

Wilson stared at House a long moment, eyes serious, expression thoughtful. “Shut up,” he finally said. “I want to watch this.”

House didn’t even have time to nod before Wilson was moving, shifting down the bed. “I –” House breathed, and then Wilson’s right ear was pressed against House’s left thigh. Wilson’s right hand tucked under House’s leg; his left hand stretched over and curled around House’s right knee.

Wilson was _cuddling_ as he watched the video play again.

House didn’t know where to put his hands. “Isn’t this a little weird for two grown men?”

“Yes,” Wilson replied, and didn’t move.

“OK.” He dropped his hands to where they fell naturally: his right onto the bed, his left onto Wilson’s shoulder. He could feel the deltoid muscle, stiff and tight, shift to accommodate him. “I’m not very good at this, Wilson.”

“You’re doing fine.”

This was weird. Weird, weird, weird, and Wilson acknowledging that it was didn’t make it any less so. They weren’t _touchers_ : no hugs, no high fives, no firm thumps against shoulder blade or bicep as he’d seen other male friends do. Another shift, another test.

House’s nerves began to twitch, a restlessness running shockwaves through him, pulsing through the gut that had been permanently twisted ever since he remembered seeing Amber on the bus. He didn’t want to watch the screen, didn’t want to feel the warmth of Wilson against him, didn’t want to hear the silence around them. He wanted forgiveness – wanted his friend back – but it was all too awkward. “I’m going to ask this so I know. Is this my punishment, being pushed out of my comfort zone over and over? Or is there something else I should –”

Wilson twisted his head and glared daggers at House. “It’s not about _you_ , you fuckhead.” He turned back toward the screen, tightened his grip around House’s knees, settled his cheek more firmly into House’s thigh. “I’m not trying to cause discomfort for you; I’m trying to get some comfort for myself.”

“Oh.” This was Wilson _taking_. It was different. It was... not awful. House tried to remember lazy Sunday evenings with Stacy and sick-days spent on the couch with his mother, what they’d done for him. He began rubbing his thumb on Wilson’s shoulder, and shifted his other hand to thread his fingers through Wilson’s hair. “I told you I was bad at this.”

“You’ll learn,” Wilson replied determinedly, and slowly the knots began to ease.


End file.
